Powell was nominated to the Fed board in 2011 as a bipartisan candidate after he helped to convince Tea Party diehards in Congress that refusing to authorize new borrowing and forcing the federal government to live hand to mouth from tax revenue would be disastrous.28 Powell was not just a smooth operator. He was also a man with a philanthropic conscience. He favored a tight labor market as the best way to address inequality and inherited a Fed organization that under both Bernanke and Yellen had recognized that it could not ignore America’s stark social disparities.
